The Valkyrie Option

by Markus Reichardt

  On the Balkans Tito's thugs have continued to cause trouble but they have not undertaken major operations recently. We cannot yet anticipate events there but all units in Albania and Greece are preparing to move out. There have been some complications with the disarming of the Italian fascist units and the Croatian lot – the Ustasha - but no showstoppers. Frankly most of them are too busy making preparations to disappear or somehow save their own skin. A number of units, a parachute regiment, a flak brigade, Luftwaffe field ground units and the crews of a number of smaller vessels from the Greek theatre are already on their way north, in all about 15 000 men so far. As are trains with all the Greek food supplies we could lay our hands on.’

  'It seems Feldmarschall, that everyone is waiting for Stalin to make up his mind. What of our naval forces?'

  'As planned all major surface units stationed in Norway have begun moving southwards towards German ports. All are carrying either stores or extra troops. Again to avoid any tussle with the British or American air forces, they are moving at night. Most of our U-boats have also reached the Norwegian ports of Bergen or Trondheim where they will refuel before heading for German ports. Naval Command assures me that everything is going according to plan.'

  von Witzleben finished. He looked around the cabinet table. There were many important items he had left out of his report. The most important perhaps was that not all U-Boats were heading home. About a dozen were standing down at sea until Berlin had a clearer picture of what Moscow or for that matter London would do. Equally all intelligence gathering continued on a wartime footing against all target nations as before. In his heart he remained convinced, and here he had the support of most of his fellow officers, that Stalin would not make peace and that the Wehrmacht faced a fight to the death in the East. Well, he was not going to abandon all his aces just yet for the politicians.

  July 29th

  St Peters Square

  The Vatican

  Rome, Italy

  His Holiness, Pius the Twelfth stood at the window of the small meeting room which opened up onto St Peters Square, the geographical centre of the Catholic faith. As so often the man who had been, Cardinal Pacelli before ascending to the throne of St Peter stood alone agonizing over the clash between worldly realities and his desire to preserve the stature and integrity of the institution he represented. Pius the 12th had made many compromises with the modern world as atheist political systems, first Bolshevism and then fascism surged through the nations that comprised his flock. He had been papal nuncio in Germany where he had come face to face with the anarchy of the godless red terror when the Bavarian Soviet had briefly ruled in Munich. The godless Reds had almost entered his office and threatened many of his staff. He had seen Hitler rise and he had noted the limits beyond which he thought, the German leader for all his posturing would not go. Pius also remembered that to his dying day Adolf Hitler had paid his dues to the church as befitting a good Catholic. …. But he had seen Hitler move against left-wing opponents first with quiet approval. Pius had previously been quoted supporting the Catholic German soldiers on the Eastern Front when he declared on Vatican Radio that the German fight in Russia were “magnanimous acts of valour which now defend the foundations of Christian culture.” Soon however, that admiration had turned to ever growing horror. But he had not spoken out and that had been his failing. One day the Almighty would ask for an explanation and then his infallibility would not protect him.

  To some of those who heard it the message appeared surprisingly political but in reality the Church and its current pope were just being consistent. He had had his reasons for his silence - fear of dividing German Catholics, fear of German retaliation against the Vatican. The allies had wanted him to take sides, to speak out against the brutality of the regime and its occupation and wars of conquest, and later others had added their voice to the need to speak out against the destruction of the Jews. But Pius had kept silent. Apart from his fears he had retained a genuine belief in his ability to function as a peacemaker at some stage. Was this the moment he asked himself for the hundredth time. His hands methodically massaging the solid gold cross that hung across his front from a long chain.

  But there had been other reasons, he had through his silence implicitly played into Hitler’s hand: more than most Catholics Pius the 12th hated Bolshevism, he loved Germany and its people, he was surrounded by Germans in his private household, all decent men and women who argued that Germany and Hitler were not necessarily the same and that one day the time would come for him to be the one to recognize the difference. The reasons were in his mind good ones but in private Pius knew he had played into Hitler’s hand and created a shadow that could hang over the Catholic Church if it failed to act now. He had wanted to be a statesman at a time when the persecuted people of Europe had needed a priest – a man of the cloth capable of standing up to the mass murders and persecutions committed in the pursuit of some warped racial theory to say that in the name of God this must stop.

  Yes, he admitted silence had been a weapon in the hands of Hitler, even though hundreds, even thousands of Catholics laypeople and priests and nuns had given shelter to those persecuted. They had acted as true Christians. One day he would have to ask the Almighty for forgiveness for this failure, a personal failure. But as his critics argued he given just one word of sanction or simply his blessing to resist the slaughter many more Catholics would have risen to the occasion. Instead Catholic priests in places such as Lithuania, Vichy France, and Croatia had aided and abetted, sometimes even participated in the slaughter. This was an uncomfortable truth that one day the Church would have to own up to.

  There was little movement on St Peters Square. The world went on seemingly without the Church. Soon the German troops in Italy would give way to English and American ones and then there would be the inevitable squabbling among the Italian politicians for a seat at the new table of power. He saw a family stroll along the Square, a man, a mother and two children. From a distance he could not see whether the children were boy or girl. They were Catholics, they should continue to come here to see solace and guidance. Something moved within Pius the 12th and he turned to the table. If these people were to find that same comfort in the church’s moral authority in future then he needed to step forward now, as a peace-maker and as a saviour of the millions potentially under threat from the advance of Bolshevism. If he could make a quiet respectable mark here maybe God in his mercy would forgive him his weak silence over the past years partially, above all maybe the Church could salvage a much greater degree of moral authority that his inaction had left it with at the moment.

  Chapter 4

  The only bond of victors is their common hate

  Winston Churchill [56]

  Hitler not only upset the balance of politics in Europe, he unleashed a virulent nationalism, as seen in the example of Yugoslavia where Croats, Montenegrins, Slovenes etc. all wanted something of their own.

  Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov [57]

  August 1st

  Vis Island

  Off the Yugoslav coast

  Partisan Headquarters

  He stood quietly on the rocky hillside. Around him the headquarters of the Yugoslav partisan movement went about its business. Among the three houses and the adjacent caves nearly 200 men and women tried to run an assembly of guerrilla units on the mainland numbering nearly quarter of a million individuals. Messengers came and went, men and women carried weapons, paper and foodstuffs around. Instinctively striking a determined pose, his mantle loosely hanging around his shoulders, Josip Broz ‘Tito’ searched the sky. The sky as always held the answer to his future; both as the source of allied supply drops and as the one element which his enemy, the Germans, still controlled.

  For three years he had now been fighting a bloody guerrilla war, a war that had cost his nation – because that’s how he thought of them – not Croats, Serbs and Montenegrins but Yugoslavs, nearly half a million dead. For much of that time he had laboured and fo
ught in isolation, patronised by the Russians and ignored by the western allies as they fawned over his royalist rivals, the Chetniks, who claimed to be partisans but were in fact collaborators. That fight had virtually split his nation down the middle, even if you did not count the collaborationist government in Belgrade. Now things were beginning to look up; the armistice offered by the German commanders offered welcome respite but as always he thought of the long-term imperatives of his dream, a socialist, truly independent Yugoslavia. The Germans had been frank about what the coup meant for them and their presence in the Balkans. What they could not tell Tito was how quickly they would leave and just how soon and how forceful the allies or the Russians for that matter would be on his doorstep. That was what mattered now. As he automatically scanned the sky for a sign of aircraft, it troubled him that it had taken him a day after the initial armistice negotiations with the Germans to realise that he had won. Well he could not really blame himself, his close associated Diljas had said, after all he – despite being reasonably fluent in German - had not been present and not been able to observe the subtle signs. But the reality was that the Germans were moving out and wanted only a few weeks of peace to get their men and material out of Greece and Albania. That meant they were giving up on Bulgaria. They would most probably hold onto to Romania if they could because of its oil; if the Red Army let them; which he doubted.

  He had won. It struck him again and made him more thoughtful. Ever since this realisation he had taken time to stand out on the hill alone. Alone with time to think back on where he had come for and where he was now going.

  Josip Broz ‘Tito’ had never been marked out for leadership in the left-wing underground that grew in the southern fringes of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire towards the end of the First World War. His leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had been a by-product of Stalin’s bloody purges in the 1930s. These purges had eliminated or discredited all Yugoslav Communists who had been important before, leaving him to assume the role of leader in time of crisis and to remake the Party in the shape he thought necessary. And this new Party needed a strong leader, even one that cultivated a personality cult. That was the way of his people. The Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Bosnians; their traditions almost required an authoritarian, yet in some respects democratic system such as Tito had evolved for his Party. The idea of a heroic leader legitimised by some form of consultative body, was traditional for the South Slav people and it had allowed him to assume the role of father figure for many of his followers. Already known as Stari – the old man – within the movement, he knew how apply the right mixture of intimacy and authority to weld his ragtag bands into a guerrilla army that now controlled nearly a quarter of Yugoslavia.

  He, the former Comintern agent, loyal servant of the Moscow Center in the interwar years, had achieved what had not been thought possible. Between late 1941 and mid 1944 his partisans had survived five major German offensives, the last two employing nearly 100 000 troops including the crack SS-Mountain Division Prinz Eugen. Although the Germans had generally been able to push the Partisans out of most of the areas in which they had set up liberated zones, they had never formally defeated them or even destroyed a substantial part of their forces. Though handicapped by their lack of air cover the partisans had fought well and had always been able to re-establish control whenever the Germans moved on. The real turning point had been the Italian surrender when over ten Italian divisions had been disarmed by the partisans. With the supplies, weaponry and volunteers from the disbanded Italian units, Tito had been able to establish temporary control over a large part of the Dalmatian coast. This had only lasted for a few weeks before the full might of the German war machine and the Croats allies had pushed them of almost all coastal areas once more. But by then it no longer mattered. In 1941 the British had not even known his name.[58] But British observer missions who had been accompanying his headquarters for over a year had finally been able to get word back to London about the true extent of his exploits. Unbeknown to him the fact that Britain could also read German Enigma radio messages helped as it exposed the collaboration of the Chetniks.[59] Since then British aid, though limited was coming regularly via airdrop and speedboat from Italy. Randolph Church, the Premier’s son himself was staying at his headquarters observing, assessing. Nearly 100 tons of weaponry since June. Now this.

  Tito smiled. In his hand he held a personal letter form Winston Churchill delivered by a British officer who claimed to have come directly from London. Rankovic, his capable intelligence chief assured him it was genuine. The letter contained an invitation for a meeting, a meeting with the British Prime Minister. How things had changed. In part it was because everyone from his Yugoslav opponents to his former Russian masters underestimated him. Stalin’s general approach towards foreign Communist parties had been to denigrate their achievements relative to those of the Russian Communists. Stalin might be the foremost Marxist but he remained a provincial human being in his outlook. Thus blindsided the Russians still did not understand the full import of his achievement. Tito himself had to admit that he had initially not fully appreciated the complete incompatibility of his achievement - a nationally-based liberation movement fighting for independence from foreign domination – with acceptance of Russian authority. Things had taken on a life of their own. After surviving the terrible winters of 42 and 43 his anti-fascist credentials had been recognized at a national level and his men had been welded into a nationally-based fighting force with national political aspirations. And all of this had happened just before the Germans had crumbled, just before the new lot in Berlin had decided to leave the Balkans – or so they claimed.

  He knew that the Germans had also talked to the royalist Chetniks about a ceasefire and that some form of agreement had been reached. The Chetniks, however, were collaborators and had finally been recognized as such by the British. That and his men’s exploits was what was behind Churchill’s invitation. The British were always meddling in Balkans were seeking to gain new friends in a post-war world. He had no illusions about Churchill’s invitation but there was a reason for going.

  He had been a guest of the British barely two months ago after the failed German parachute attack on his headquarters in Drvar. Back then he had been rattled not at his best. When the grey parachutes had rained down on Drvar he and the Premier’s son had barely gotten out in time. Some of his lieutenants had not. He looked at the greyish paper again, translated into Serb by some obliging administrator in London. Churchill’s letter spoke of the need to discuss matters of mutual concern such as the future security of the Balkans. What an oblique phrase so typical of the British, Tito smiled. That was their weakness they never sought to engage head-on. He always preferred to be more direct. That’s how he had accomplished his arrangement with the exiled Yugoslav Government the month before, when they had effectively legitimised his claim. Now Churchill’s invitation offered two things, recognition of his military and political role, and perhaps more important in the long run a new range of options to counterbalance any heavy-handed Russian presence in his neighbourhood. He was no longer Moscow’s servant or agent, but the leader of a national movement. He hoped that the meeting with Churchill would lead to things that would allow him to explain the subtleties of this to his former masters.

  August 1

  Warsaw

  The plan was for the uprising to start at 5 pm but at 1:50pm the first fire fight erupted between a group of assembling Home Army members and a German patrol. The Poles, on their way to their assembly point, reacted first and the Germans did not live to tell the tale. But by the time the Home Army units tried to rush the key German strongpoints in Warsaw, the alert had gone out from Governor Fischer’s office: As hundreds of young men and women wearing red and white armbands rushed, infiltrated or bombarded German sandbagged positions they ran into murderous machinegun fire. Civilians, still on the street, and attackers alike were cut down by the dozen. But a few hours later Bor’s headquarters,
relocated to the Kammler tobacco factory in the Vola suburb, received confirmation that the polish red-and-white banner was flying from the Prudential building, Warsaw’s tallest. The post office, power station, the Praga railway office a Wehrmacht arsenal and large sections of the city were taken but the toll was nearly 2000 dead.

  Even the fire-eating Okulicki fell silent as the casualty reports came in. By nightfall he and Bor had to accept that despite some successes, many key objectives had not been won. They had failed to take the old town around Castle Square, the Police District and more significantly the airport and any bridge over the Vistula. The airport, the Lotnisko Okecie, was to have been the port of entry for any Free Polish forces coming from England. Any supplies that might now come from outside would have to be airdropped into the city. A few hours later radio contact with London, lost during the move to the tobacco factory, was re-established and the message ‘the struggle for Warsaw has begun’ went out. Bor outlined his accomplishments and his failures and ended with a plea for airdrops. After all the Home Army plan called for holding out for less than ten days before being relieved. Okulicki quickly set about exploring a way in which the Polish Parachute Brigade, whose release from British command he expected any day, could be deployed without access to the airport.

  The next day, August 2nd, Ambassador Raczynski informed the British Foreign Office of the Home Army’s rising. He also passed on an urgent request for help. While Eden and his staff mulled things over, Churchill, ever the romantic, acted. Bypassing the chain of command he telephoned the senior RAF commander in Italy, Air Marshall Slessor that the British Government wished to provide all possible support be given to the Poles if he thought it operationally practical. After all his long range bomber squadrons had been flying to Poland from its Italian bases, dropping supplies to the Home Army units for over a year now. Slessor immediately ordered the commanding officers of the 1586th Polish Special Duties Flight, No 334 Wing and No 624 squadron, all staffed by Polish airmen, to report on the logistical issues surrounding such an operation. Just when these had been resolved, the Foreign Office intervened convincing the Prime Minister to hold back until the Soviet position could be established. Churchill’s telegram was simple ‘I expect from you’ he wrote to Stalin’ the greatest efforts in this respect.[60]’ For Slessor that was just fine, the weather forecast for the next 48 hours meant that the Liberators and Halifax bombers of the various Polish units stayed at their Foggia airbases. The trip to Warsaw, Slessor informed Churchill was too far for aircraft flying from anywhere else unless they could go on to a Russian airfield. For that Stalin’s consent was needed. Churchill sent the request on August 4th but received no immediate answer.